The EU-funded cross-border Interreg Automotive project Light Vehicle 2025 in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine region has been officially kicked-off by its six partners Flanders Make, Automotive NL, AMAC, Technifutur, University of Liège and Campus Automobile Spa-Francorchamps.

The Euregio Meuse-Rhine comprises Wallonia and Flanders in Belgium, Limburg and Noord-Brabant in The Netherlands and North-Rhine Westphalia in Germany. The project runs until 2021.

The Euregio Meuse-Rhine provides a huge potential with its many innovative companies, especially SMEs, which are active along the whole value chain in the future-oriented areas of lightweight, electric mobility and autonomous driving. The presence of a large number of representatives along the whole chain in the Euregio makes this geographical area one of the most attractive for any kind of automotive business. In particular, the advanced material sector is established and growing, with a consolidated offer ranging from the raw material producer, through technology development to production, from research and development to industrial OEM.

The benefit of joining forces across borders in Light Vehicle 2025 is in bundling the technological competences as well as global and local networks for the greatest benefit of everybody. It will help companies in the Euregio to access an extended supply chain using multi-material systems and will support them in tackling the challenges for the future in automotive.

One key objective of the LV2025 project is to connect the competences of the industrial companies, institutions and universities present in the Euregio. Furthermore, the competences of the Euregio will also be showcased through the design and the manufacturing of several selected lightweight component prototypes. The aim is to build an important virtual technology centre on automotive engineering and manufacturing for the future.

Light Vehicle 2025 will focus on innovation and new technologies, provide gap analysis on technologies and cost, as well as on training possibilities, select potentials, connect people and businesses, inspire cooperation and cross border clusters, raise awareness of coming market requirements, stimulate knowledge transfer and provide and up-to-date worker and engineer training framework.

“With our activities in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, we are going to help the parties to mutually increase their competitiveness, to initiate and run joint demonstration projects, to strengthen the economy in all involved regions and finally to secure working places," says Dr Michael Effing, Founder and CEO of AMAC. "With lightweight materials, design and manufacturing, we create the future in automotive: safer, lighter, more fun to drive, environmentally friendly through material savings and reduced fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The project will show that lightweight designs and materials can also be cost-efficient in high-volume production cycles thanks to new progresses in integrative manufacturing technologies using multi-material systems.”